1. Make sure attendees have no clear idea why they're there or what the meeting is supposed to accomplish.
2. Connect the computer, projection system, and phone-conference setup and then walk away and let the meeting run on its own--voices of experts at a remote location accompanied by PowerPoint slides.
3. Make sure the consultants speak with the monotonous squawk of the teachers in the Charlie Brown cartoons--in fact, their presentations skills should be so awful that if any of us taught like that in the classroom, we'd get fired in a heartbeat.
4. Insist upon inept use of PowerPoint--slides crammed with jargon and ugly acronyms.
5. Make sure the jargon is almost, but not quite, totally incomprehensible. "Spear of influence." (Where can I get one of those?) "Transparent foundations." (Won't people trip?) "Sharp focus on many dimensions." (Sorry, but my eyes don't work that way.)
6. When the absent consultants need to demonstrate something on a web browser, make sure that there is no discernible relationship between what the voice is droning on about and what appears on the screen in the browser.
7. Remind attendees that we are paying good money for the absent consultants' expertise so we'd darn well better get our money's worth out of them. You definitely want your attendees to devote their thoughts to just how much more money they could be making if they'd chosen another career path, like droning on to no clear purpose in conference calls all over the country.
6 comments:
Ugh!
I love the spear of influence, though! What a great image! Did they really say that? (And so different from the standard metaphor there.)
Yes, they really said that. I have witnesses!
Did they not know the usual metaphor, or were they playing with it?
I'm guessing it was a slip of the tongue. They were aiming toward "sphere of influence" but missed.
I find myself increasingly wondering what outside consultants (good as well as bad) are paid for their work, since it often looks more interesting, as well as more remunerative, than mine. This is, of course, not good for higher ed, and one of the worst consequences of the overvaluing of administration and undervaluing of actual teaching. It's also worth noting that, if the present incentive system continues (and the economy improves enough to offer other options for underpaid faculty, full- and part-time) that we might wake up one day to find there are nothing but administrators and consultants left. And without faculty to manage, advise, etc., where will they be?
Mind you, I'm all for mindfulness of and discussion about our teaching, and even a modicum of assessment; I just suspect all of the above work best when conducted primarily by groups of teachers unhampered by outside supervision/advice (and compensated in some way for same as part of their regular duties).
I definitely agree. While I'm all in favor of bringing in outside expertise when we need a burst of inspiration or information about how other campuses handle similar issues, we're far too willing to grab onto every program that looks like an instant savior. And when I think about how much money we spend for our ephemeral saviors, I get really really angry.
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